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Dems seek 'Truth Commission' probe of Bush

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Dems seek 'Truth Commission' probe of Bush

ABC 7 (San Francisco)by Mark MatthewsMarch 4, 2009

WASHINGTON (KGO) --
There were calls on Capitol Hill Wednesday for an investigation into
how the Bush Administration conducted its War On Terror. There is a
proposal for a so-called "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" to be
formed.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D) from Vermont, the Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman, is leading Democrats in calling for a blue-ribbon panel to
investigate allegations of torture at Guantanamo.

The so-called Truth Commission would look into a series of secret
memos from the Office of Legal Counsel that advised President Bush,
telling him he had unprecedented powers to detain and eavesdrop and
interrogate using techniques that had been considered torture.

"It's important for an independent body to hear these assertions, but
also for others if we're going to make an objective and independent
judgment about what happened," said Senator Leahy.

Leahy says he's not looking for criminal indictments, just the truth of what happened.

At U.C. Davis, Almerindo Ojeda Ph.D., leads a group of scholars
collecting accounts of prisoners and guards at Guantanamo. On Tuesday,
he wrote to Leahy's committee urging formation of the Truth Commission.

"I think it's necessary and inevitable. I think if we don't do it, someone will be doing it for us," said Ojeda.

Ojeda says he's heard from a Guantanamo guard who described how prisoners were tortured by the camps medical staff.

"Inducing pain in them under the guise of treatment, that whole thing is very little known," said Ojeda.

Opponents of shutting down the Guantanamo detention center include John
Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and former Bush Administration attorney,
who authored key legal justifications for the interrogations. Yoo told
the Orange County Register on Tuesday, closing Guantanamo and ending
the interrogations carries a cost, "The cost& we will get less
information about the enemy."

"Information extracted by
torture is just pure crap. I've seen it, you ask me how I know, because
we used to read these intelligence reports," said Robert Baer, a former
CIA agent.

Robert Baer spent 21 years in the CIA, most of it
in the Middle East. He says the CIA's admission that it destroyed 92
tapes of so-called harsh interrogations should lead to a criminal
investigation.

"The only reason they would destroy these
tapes, is if they had something to hide and that's evidence. And if
people are destroying evidence in a potential criminal trial, they
should go to jail," said Baer.

Right now Democrats in the
Senate say they'll forgo the pursuit of criminal indictments, but
Republicans worry the commission would become a political hammer.

"The suggestion that this subject can be delved into somehow in a
non-partisan fashion, to me, asks us to suspend our power of
disbelief," said Senator John Cornyn (R) of Texas.

Former CIA
Agent Robert Baer told ABC7 the torture interrogations were conducted
mostly by contractors that CIA agents, actual agents, knew it was
illegal and wouldn't get involved.

If you want to read what
everyone from FBI agents and interrogators, to the detainees
themselves, have told the Guantanamo Testimonials Project at U.C.
Davis, you can click on the link below.